A Status Report on
the DayZ website talks about the future of Bohemia Interactive's
survival game (thanks
Polygon). Though this entered early access four
years ago, the game is still considered to be in the alpha phase. At one
point they said the beta stage
would not happen before the end
of 2014, but now they say it will not come before the end of 2017 either, in
spite of word in May that the beta tag was
imminent. The good news is that they say the game should enter beta next year
and they also indicate they expect it to reach version 1.0 before the end of
2018, though obviously such predictions have not proven reliable in the past.
The other caveat is they say they do not expect the beta to be feature complete,
which would still be considered an alpha in the good old days. Here's current
outlook on their release plans:

Let's just state the obvious: the PC
BETA is not coming before the end of 2017. We tried to get it done sooner,
but it's going to be 2018 folks. Both the BETA update and any further 0.63
updates, up to 1.0, will happen in 2018, which is shaping up to be one of
the most important years for DayZ. That is as much as we are sure of yet. I'll
be honest, it has been a long wait already - even for us - but that's all we got
now.

DayZ BETA is not meant to be a feature complete game from our point of
view. It's a start of a platform that will be extended by us, and can be
extended by the modding community. When we kick-started DayZ, one of the most
challenging projects at Bohemia, the aim was to bring both the game AND a new
engine out to you - a complete game platform. Almost all company resources
were focused there. It’s a giant undertaking that bit us in the ass, but we kept
our focus on delivering that envisioned platform.

By saying platform, I mean an ecosystem where we are able to keep adding
things and building the DayZ community from PC BETA onward. We have talked about
a number of features over the years that we intend to deliver, but our
strongest focus has been put on the core loop of the game. There, we need to
get things right, otherwise it would be a giant waste of time. For all of
us, and for all of you. So after the PC BETA of DayZ gets out, we will focus on
polishing the core gameplay loop, and adding content - but until we reach
1.0, we want to stay away from expanding the scope of the game further by
additional features.

Just to be clear: features mean large gameplay loops on their own, for example
persistence, or the infected. By content, I mean particular weapon,
car, or environment asset models. In short, content is anything that
provides more options within given features, or provides more of general visual
appeal.

For the PC BETA (again, that's the first 0.63 Stable update, and any 0.63
patches between that and 1.0 - there's no 0.64 or 0.65 planned), we've set a
pretty clear feature and content goals. We're ready to share them now, let's
start with features.

Both the BETA update and any further 0.63 updates, up to 1.0, will happen in 2018, which is shaping up to be one of the most important years for DayZ. And by that time, even more people will have moved on.....